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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

When Life Gets Too Hard

There's a common saying that "God won't give you more than you can handle." I find that such a sad lie. When a parent's child dies, when a person is starving with no roof over their head, when depression hits too hard, this statement can feel like a person is being told to "get a hold of" themselves, despite the good intentions behind it. But God will be your strength when the hard times come, and with Him we can endure unspeakable pain and suffering--not because of our strength, but because of Him working in us.

Today, my special guest, Tamera Kraft, shares a word with us. Be encouraged!

But first! I have the privilege of announcing the winner of our Mother's Day Giveaway! Congratulations go to Barb Peterson! I'll be contacting you soon to get your mailing address.

~Jennifer

Does God Give Us More than We Can
Handle?

by Tamera Lynn
Kraft

I’ve heard the
saying many times. God never gives us more than we can handle. But that’s only
partially true. Here’s the verse it comes from.

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has
overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will
not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation
will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

It says in the
verse that God won’t give you a temptation you can’t handle. But trials and
difficulties are another matter. He promises we will have difficulties and lots
of them. Some of them will be harder than we can handle on our own.

Before I knew
this, I used to get mad at God. I didn’t understand why He allowed things to
come into my life that were beyond me. Then I learned this simple truth. There
are reasons God gives us more than we can handle.

If He didn’t
give us more than we can handle, we wouldn’t know how much we need Him. We
wouldn’t be on our knees crying out to the only One who can help us through our
difficulties. Jesus Christ is the only One who can speak to the wind and waves
in our lives and command them to be still. That’s good news because I get in
trouble when I think I can manage without Him.

The other
reason is to grow our faith and perseverance. The book of James tells us that
trials are a good thing. They strengthen us spiritually. When an athlete
trains, he works at stretching his limits so he can get stronger. He puts a little
more on himself than he can easily handle. It’s the same spiritually. God
allows us to stretch ourselves spiritually by putting more on us than we can
easily handle so that our faith can grow. When I look over my life, I find
there are things I can manage easily now that would have thrown me years ago.

In my novella, Resurrection of Hope, Vivian went
through some storms she thought she couldn’t handle. Her fiancé died in the
Great War. The same year, her entire family died from the influenza pandemic,
and she was evicted from her home because of her father’s gambling debts.
Through it all, she found the only way she could handle the things life threw
at her was to put her hope and trust in God.

God will put more on us than we can handle, but
we can always trust in Him to help us through it.

She thought he was her knight in
shining armor, but will a marriage of convenience prove her wrong?

After Vivian’s fiancé dies in the
Great War, she thinks her life is over. But Henry, her fiancé’s best friend,
comes to the rescue offering a marriage of convenience. He claims he promised
his friend he would take care of her. She grows to love him, but she knows it
will never work because he never shows any love for her.

Henry adores Vivian and has pledged
to take care of her, but he won’t risk their friendship by letting her know.
She’s still in love with the man who died in the Great War. He won’t risk
heartache by revealing his true emotions.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always
loved adventures. She loves to write historical fiction set in the United
States because there are so many stories in American history. There are strong
elements of faith, romance, suspense and adventure in her stories. She has
received 2nd place in the NOCW contest, 3rd place TARA writer’s contest, and is
a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest and has other novellas in print.
She’s been married for 37 years to the love of her life, Rick, and has two
married adult children and two grandchildren.

Aaaaaand, before you go, an introduction. To my (Jennifer's) alter ego. As some of you know, I write more emotionally intense novels--about the homeless, orphans, single moms with insanely busy and unpredictable careers. And I still will, under my real name. BUT, I also want to write fun! Without confusing you all regarding genre. (In other words, I want you to know what to expect when you purchase one of my novels.) For this reason, I decided to launch a pen name. Meet her HERE!